 This is the SF Productions Podcast Network. The following program was videotaped in front of a live studio audience. From the Pop Culture Bunker, I'm Mindy. And I'm Mark. You can check out our audio podcast, How I Got My Wife to Read Comics on iTunes, or on our website SFPodcastNetwork.com. Now, we recently did an episode covering the history of audio recording, so why not video? When television first came along, there were two options, broadcast a film by pointing a TV camera at a film screen or broadcast live, with no way to record the event. The first method of recording video was essentially the opposite of broadcasting a film. By pointing a film camera at a TV screen, the resulting film was called a kinescope, and virtually all TV shows prior to 1956 that you see today, those that weren't on film in the first place, survive due to this method. Experimental kinescopes were made alongside the first experimental broadcasts in the early 30s, and followed along as TV became a commercial medium. Kinescopes were vital in the early days, as there was no national TV broadcast in the U.S. Each TV network had subnetworks in the East, Midwest, and West, partially producing their own programming, but if you wanted to get a show across the country, you made a kinescope and you sent it out. Technology would later create true national networks, and kinescopes became less vital, but not less profitable. Early syndication of shows that were originally live still required them. The Dumont TV network created the electronic cam, a camera that would capture video and record a film version simultaneously. The classic 39 episode of the Honeymooners can be seen today because of this. Watch for electronic cam mentioned in the credits. All of this was very workable, but very bulky, and complicated. So electronic methods of video recording were also underway. RCA created the Simplex, a less ironic name could not be found apparently, which used magnetic tape running at 360 inches a second, with color possible by recording each of the major colors, red, green and blue, on separate tracks. Oh, and did I forget to mention it could only record a few minutes at a time? The BBC experimented with what they called Vera, which used up to 200 inches a second. Being Crosby's production company, they brought the world up practical method of audio tape recording, see episode 192, modified their Ampex system to record video again using up to 360 inches a second. It took a different view to make video recording practical, and it came from Ampex. In 1956, they introduced a recorder using two inch wide tape, which scanned the tape across the width by moving the tape head back and forth. The VR-1000 cost $45,000 at the time, or $415,000 today, and was the size of a dishwasher. Also, the tape had to be played back on the same unit that recorded it. Despite these restrictions, the networks snapped them up. They were first used to videotape shows produced on the East Coast to avoid recreating them three hours later for the West Coast. NBC's audience participation show Truth or Consequences was the first regular series to be broadcast in all time zones from videotape in 1957. Evidence of the oldest videotape in existence can be seen on YouTube, a TV spectacular starring Bing Crosby, there he is again, along with Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, and Louis Armstrong brought together to introduce the Ed Soul. It was produced in Hollywood and broadcast to all time zones live except for the West Coast, which saw it on tape. An archeological effort found that the tape was being used as a paperweight by a CBS engineer and then they restored it. The first color video recording in existence involved a local TV station, Washington's WRC, which introduced their color broadcasts with a speech from President Eisenhower. Why was finding an old videotape so rare? Because tapes were expensive and the entertainment industry, always looking forward to the future, assumed no one would ever want to see the shows again, so they taped over them. This is why the first ten years of Johnny Carson's Tonight Show are gone, as well as most 60's game shows. Now there are myriad stories about tapes being thrown out which could have made media companies millions today. Professional videotape would shrink down to a one inch width over time. Then another major update, the videocassette. Until this point, all videotapes were on open reels which were difficult to use and maintain. BAM! Sony introduced a three-quarter tape in cassette form called the U-Matic, based on how the tape was fed across the tape head in a U-shape. It quickly took over the industry and was widely used into the 90's. This is one we used for the public access show I did, check out Fast Wasteland from the Vault, on SFPPN. U-Matic units were the first to be sold officially to the consumer market in 1971, but it never caught on. You could get open real formats before that but you had to know someone in Japan that would ship them to you. Philip introduced the VCR format using a squarish cassette a year later, not that yet. It was successful in Europe, but never marketed in the U.S. It would take Sony and Betamax to make it in America. The half-inch tape cassette would introduce the concept of time-shifting. Keep in mind that until that point, if you wanted to watch a show, you had to be in front of a TV set when it was broadcast. The first recorder sold in the U.S. was part of a huge TV VCR cabinet. A friend of my dad had one and I was entranced. JVC would introduce the similar VHS format a year later and a format were waged until the mid-80s when the VHS finally won. Why? Some refer to the theory that all great leaps in technology take advantage of one thing to kick things off, porn. There was a rumor that Sony wouldn't allow porn on beta, so that's why VHS won. Well, that's technically true. Sony wouldn't allow mass production of porn with their equipment, but that wasn't it. It came down to two things, cost and recording time. JVC's design of VHS used less expensive and less complex components so that their recorders cost less than beta, with a corresponding loss in quality, although both sides would up that game over time. Then VHS was able to create a longer recording time, partly due to a slightly larger cassette case, which allowed a single tape to record a week of hour-long shows, like The Soaps. Beta, at least at the beginning, couldn't match that. All of this pushed things in VHS's direction and when video rental stores began popping up, they didn't want to duplicate their stock and side it mostly with VHS. VHS ruled the roost for years, weathering an attack by two other formats, neither of which used tape. Methods to record video to a disc go back to the 1890s, photographs could be projected from a glass disc and various experimental formats can be found until the 70s. In 1978, the DiscoVision, an appropriate name for the time, was introduced by MCA and Philips. It would eventually be named Laserdisc and used an optical or reflective process to read digital data encoded on a silver disc with a laser. For a period of time, this became the connoisseur's video choice as it provided high quality, for the time, video and various audio options. Of course, I jumped into this market and bought quite a few discs, mostly at a deep discount as the format faded. There were many offshoots of this format for industrial and educational use. Meanwhile, RCA introduced SelectraVision in 1981. It also used a disc which was sheathed inside a cartridge similar to 3.5 inch floppy discs. It used a physical stylus to read the analog data off the disc similar to an audio album. While this was less expensive, the quality of video wasn't great plus physical scratches on the disc resulted in draft frames. Now, I remember watching the Wizard of Oz at a friend's house seeing them go down the Yellowbrick Road in a jerky manner. While SelectraVision was never a huge hit, it was responsible for one of the first cable TV channels. RCA was marketing the format as a way to sell music in a new way as music videos which they produced for their artists and sold as discs. As it all fell apart, RCA wanted to recoup their losses so they sold those videos to Viacom who created MTV to show them. The first few months of that channel mostly involved showing music videos previously on SelectraVision. There were also miniaturized tape formats primarily designed for camcorders such as Sony's 8mm and JVC's VHS-C. There was an attempt to branch these out into commercial tapes but it didn't go anywhere. VHS finally was supplanted by the DVD, Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc, depending on who you ask. Essentially, a smaller and better designed offshoot of a laser disc and a compact disc, DVD was the result of a compromise among the electronic companies who wanted to avoid another format war. Its ease of use and storage made it the format of choice by the 2000s. DVD also introduced regional control so that media companies could theoretically control where a particular title could be sold and used, although hardware companies created some workarounds. When it was time to upgrade from DVD, another format war raged, HD DVD versus Blu-ray starting in 2006. It would take two years for the HD DVD to hit the canvas. Blu-ray was designed for the high depth screens being sold as part of the digital conversion and had less complicated regional restrictions. And now we have 4K Blu-ray, 3D Blu-ray, just in time for physical video media to become obsolete. Video cameras now record to hard drive or memory chip like ours and most viewing of video is being done via streaming. But there's still something about having physical media in your hands. No media behemoth can decide to move it elsewhere or remove it altogether. Digital extras are available. Yeah, I'm justifying my large media collection, so what? So, while I keep trying to argue in getting rid of some of the huge media collection, you can check out our audio podcast, How I Got My Wife to Read Comics, on iTunes or on our website sfpodcastnetwork.com. From the Pop Culture Bunker, I'm Mindy. And I'm Mark. Thanks for watching.